It’s a parade! Everyone loves parades! I’m sitting in a reclining beach chair watching a line of Roman Catholic saints walk past. I recognize so very few of them, and know the names of even less. I’m not upset to see them. Something about their devotion to their cause is uplifting.
“Hey, it’s [unintelligible]!” A old man with a young timbre is standing beside my chair. I see he has a cane and immediately offer him my seat. He laughs as he waves me off but thanks me for the offer just the same. A chunk of wood is suddenly behind him and he sits on that. A filthy mongrel of a black dog phlumps down at his feet. The man’s cane and his dog are very familiar, but I can’t place him right then.
He points at the slow measure of the procession. “Do you know where they are going?”
I look down to where they are facing. There is a glow on the horizon but I can’t make out anything iidentifiable “Well, they’re saints, so I would presume they are going to Heaven. Or Purgatory. Or both. I can tell you where they won’t be going, because they’re saints!”
The old man wheezes as he laughs. “Ha! So, because their church says they’re sanctified, that gives them a free pass outta Hell? And what about all them devoted folk that ain’t never had anyone whisper their name to the Pope? Not all the saints you see here are saintly, and not all that should be recognized as saints, are here!” He slaps his knee. “Hell, if you read through the Bible again, you’ll see folks that are considered saintly to them folk back then, but would be the first thrown out the church now!” He rocks back and forth as he laughs.
His monologue gives me time to examine his appearance closer. My attention keeps coming back to the cane and the dog. The cane is barely more than a crooked tree branch, worn down by years of being handled. The dog has probably never seen soap in his life and is on the border between underweight and starving. I realize the laughter has stopped. The old man is studying my face as I study him. His bright eyes fail to conceal a daring nature.
“Okay, girl. I’ll get to the meat of it. How come you’s sitting here, watching holy saints walk past you, without even a care? They have holy things in their hands, and you’re within reach of being hit by it. But you’re not running.”
I turned back to the procession. It stretched far into the distance in both directions. “There’s nothing to fear. Not in their holy things, not in themselves. They are responsible for how they live. I am responsible for how I live. How they live has no bearing on me. I am not beholden to them. They are not my betters. I don’t serve them.”
“But your bloodline, girl. You have…”
I cut him off with a raised finger and a vicious stare as I turned in my seat towards him. “My bloodline is none of their, or their church’s business. My bloodline is only a matter between me and one other entity, and you Sir, are not that entity. Others may disqualify me from entry into their special clubs because of my bloodline, but that is no loss to me. I’d rather not associate with consummate assholes, nor place myself into their hands! Now, then, Sir, since you can make pointed and quite impolite inquiries into my nature, I shall return the favor. Who the fuck are you?”
The more I spoke, the bigger his grin. When I ended with my own inquiry, he laughed so hard he almost fell off his makeshift stool. “You don’t see me? You don’t! You really don’t! Oh, girl! How far you have come since I first met you at the Crossroads! That you have the backbone to stand up to me when you don’t even know who I am! Oh! Wow!” His dog wagged his tail at the affair, and showed a little more friendliness towards me than before, but otherwise the mutt remained on the ground where he was safe from the old man’s wildly waved cane. “You stood up for yourself, and without crossing the line into arrogance. Well done, girl! Well done!” He ended his laughter with sincere clapping.
I felt like taking a bow, but I noted that for all his exclamations, he still hasn’t given me a straight answer. His words were as crooked as his cane.
Wait.
Crooked cane. Black mangy dog. We met at the Crossroads? But there was only one entity I met at the Crossroads that was accompanied by a dog…
Oh.
Shit.
His grin widens as my face smooths from recognition. He chuckles as he speaks. “Hello, girl.”
“Hello, [Sir].”
“Nice parade, isn’t.”
I turn back to the parade once again, and take another look at the procession of the saints. They were still people that I did not recognize, but now a few of them have changed. Black men and women were dressed in the clothes of the saints, but they held a paper mask of the saint before their face. Many of the masks were of white people. Most of the disguised participants were very dark hued and showed little or no mixing of ethnicities.
“[Sir], you know I’m supposed to be staying away from the Orishas. And certainly from the Lwas. Bad blood, you know.”
He snorted in open mockery of my trailing words and grinned conspiratorially “Yea, well, if I recall, you didn’t willingly come near to me that day. You did your damnedest to stay clear until your hand was forced. And even then, you’ve been a pain in the ass to catch.” He patted me on the shoulder with a surprisingly strong grip. “However, caught you were! By [Redacted], no less. Figures he would be the one.”
He leaned over my shoulder and pointed towards the source of the procession. There, standing off the side was the archetype of the whitest of white women. I blinked and I saw she was really a very beautiful black woman dressed in marian blue robes with a crown of stars around her veiled head. She held a mask of a white woman in her right hand over her face. In her left hand, she cradled a Black Madonna statue. I knew who she was pretending to be, and who she really was. I looked back at [the Man with a Crooked Cane] in askance.
“You know her?” He asked in that way that betrayed he already knew the answer.
“I know the face she is wearing, and the face under it. But I already have a connection with the former, and I am not capable of connecting to the latter.”
“Why?”
“Why to which part?” I wasn’t trying to be snide. Both are long stories.
He lowered his head to think on how to word his question. “Why can’t you connect? Knowing all that you know now, why not?”
Just how do I tell him that she, that is the she under the mask, represents to me a type of femininity that I do not understand? That if I were to approach her formally, it would feel to me like I was taking a hundred steps backwards in my path to be free of the lingering bullshit left from all the abuses on me. That the culture she watches over wants no part of me, and that even if I were to immerse myself in it until I was a hundred years of age, I would always be the outsider. How do I tell him that I feel as wanted as the mangy dog at his feet? Knowing all that I know, I know I am not one of hers. “Because I am not hers.”
“Neither are you Mary’s.” There was no lilt of humor present. For [him] to be this serious meant the topic was gravely so.
“Mary does not own me. She doesn’t crown me. There is an acknowledgement of that between us. I can approach Mary because she allows no barriers between herself and those that truly wish to know her and the love she represents and offers, Christian or not. There is a pact of non-aggression between Mary and me. She knows I will never go back to Christianity, and she accepts that. She doesn’t seek to make me part of her kingdom, or part of her god’s kingdom. But [this woman here], doesn’t share. For her to step into the role that Mary is currently playing in my life is to lower herself. [She] is a queen. A monarch. One that barely tolerates the others in her pantheon, and you know that personally. Could you see her making herself into an archetypal role as Mary has done? Come on, now. The Orishas and the Lwas may make occasional exceptions to fuck with me, but for [her] to make herself merely an advisor in my life with nothing in return? That’s a hella stretch and you know it.”
He regarded me with brightly severe eyes. I accepted that whatever happened, I most likely brought it on myself and I would just have to deal with it without recourse. Beside us, the procession of the saints continued on in silence.
He stood up. I quickly stood to be polite. His dog refused to move. “I tell you a thing, girl. Because of your blood, regardless of how dirty or mixed or diluted you think it is, we’re with you. All of us. You are correct to say that you can’t serve us the traditional way because there has been too great a break between the traditional practitioners and you, but you are mistaken if you think that disqualifies us from further fucking with you.” He smirked as he mocked my words. “[That one Orisha] has you by blood. And by extension, so do we all. But you will come to us in your way, because that’s how you are. You will not approach [the black woman] in the traditional way as you have been shown. Just like you don’t approach [a certain black man] in the traditional way as you have been shown. But just like how there are two mongrels here, there is a connection between you and [that black woman there].”
He readjusted the straw hat on his balding head. “So. Now that you know not all saints are saintly, next time you find yourself surrounded by icons, look twice and greet those you see.” He reached out and adjusted the satin cord tied around my neck. “It’s not beneath us to wear white faces. If this is what it takes to make sure our children survive, we’ll keep doing it.”
“I’m not…” He raised his cane to my lips. I took the hint and silenced myself.
“You’re more than you know. More than you remember. I know other gods and other peoples’ gods have been courting you, but as long as you are [Keri], we’re here. Now I know you’re going to run up that [Tree of Life] coming and going, and that’s good because it has been helping you release yourself. Just remember you still have other duties because of what you are. [The Christian god] couldn’t keep you from them. And oh, how he tried and tried!” He tipped his straw hat in a gesture of farewell and turned away from me.
“You know, the timing of this dream is suspect as fuck. This isn’t my doubt talking, is it?”
“Heh. If it was your doubt, girl, you would not be here. Now be a good girl and wake up now. You have, how do you say it… shenanigans to start.”
His dog jumped to its feet and quickly trotted off after the man in a widely meandering trail. As he left, the parade of saints continued behind me.
When I woke, I remembered the statue of the Black Madonna in the woman’s arms. It wasn’t clear if that statue belonged to the persona she was wearing, or to her directly.
God damn it. Just when I thought the number of unresolved puzzles was down to a manageable number.